Salva Kiir Mayardit

Salva Kiir Mayardit (13 September 1951-) was President of South Sudan from its independence on 9 July 2011, previously serving as Vice-President of Sudan from 11 August 2005 to 9 July 2011, succeeding John Garang and preceding Ali Osman Taha.

Biography
Salva Kiir Mayardit was born on 13 September 1951 in Bahr el-Ghazal, Sudan to a Catholic family. In the late 1960s, Kiir joined the Anyanya Battalion of the Sudanese Army, and he joined the defector John Garang in forming the Sudan People's Liberation Army in 1983 at the start of the Second Sudanese Civil War, fighting for the rights of the Christian and animist peoples of South Sudan against the Muslim north. When Garang was killed in a helicopter crash in 2005, Kiir became the new commander of the SPLA in its fight against the Sudanese government, although many suspected Kiir of having a hand in Garang's possible assassination. He also became First Vice President of the Sudanese government, taking over Garang's role, but his priority was South Sudanese independence. In January 2011, 99.83% of South Sudanese voters voted for independence from northern Sudan, and Kiir became the first president of an independent South Sudan. Kiir had to deal with the Hegelig Crisis, in which South Sudan and Sudan fought a brief border war, in addition to conflict with his vice-president Riek Machar. From December 2013, the South Sudanese Civil War raged in the country, and as many as 300,000 people died, while over 1,860,000 civilians were displaced.